Hatred, Courage, and Betrayal
by DoctorStonegarden
Summary: The other side of the coin to Loyalty, Cowardice and Love, to which this is a sequel. Enjoy.
1. Hatred I

_In Which Tristan's Suspicions Prove To Be Well-Founded, And There Is Running Away_

_**X**_

The attack comes without warning, as all the best of them do. They've walked right into the sorceress's trap, in a deep hollow in the foothills of the Mountains of Isgard, South of the white Citadel of Camelot; three of the roundish depression's sides are too steep to ascend without laying down arms, and are in any case lined with ranks of crossbowmen in ragged black, the gentle slope leading up to the sweeping fields to the North blocked by another three dozen cloaked mercenaries.

These are the remnants of Helios's decimated horde of sellswords, now brought under the aegis of the fierce witch who contracted them in the first place.

All in all, there are five dozen of them, far outnumbering the party from Camelot; the king, his queen, ten knights, and three servants, two cowering and terrified, the one who is always there absent, away collecting firewood. It feels wrong to not have him there.

The horses nicker off to the side, aware that something is going on but with the disinclination to care common to beasts of servitude. Except dogs.

Well, that should be eleven knights, but Tristan doesn't think of himself as a knight, really. It's a ticket to a big, warm bed and a free, warm meal, and good company besides.

Tristan is a smuggler through and through. It's important to get your priorities right. All he has to do is wallop the occasional bandit and give his undying loyalty to King Arthur.  
Who is, if Tristan is honest, a massive _prat_.

Oh yes, he's seen what Arthur _can_ be; noble, wise, tolerant, morally incorrupt, giving… but that seems to be an on-off sort of thing. Not since the witch queen took Camelot a second time has Tristan seen that great, golden king, who cares for all his people and treats them, like, well… people.

But it seems that Arthur only becomes that man when the people need that great golden warrior to save them all, and the rest of the time behaves like an absolute arse.

It isn't in Arthur's nature to rule dispassionately with a utilitarian approach as his father did, but he can't stop trying to do just that. He keeps trying to rule his kingdom as his father would have wanted, no matter that his father is dead and cold and slowly rotting away, and it's now up to Arthur to decide how to rule Camelot.

For that, Tristan finds himself hating Arthur more often than not, but for other reasons as well.

_Especially_ where Merlin is concerned.

Can't Arthur see that no-one has given up more for him than his manservant?

Can't the fool see he's the biggest hypocrite in the Five Kingdoms, making a maidservant his queen and commoners knights while he leaves Merlin as an undeserving servant?

Can't he see that Camelot would fall apart without Merlin?

Maybe he knows all of this, but wilfully chooses to ignore it. It would be just like Arthur, pretending not to care.

Or perhaps he's just stupid.

Tristan thinks that explanation is more likely. Merlin, despite the vitriolic nature of his relationship with his idiot of a king, is clearly the brains of the outfit - no matter that Arthur call _him_ the idiot.

The whole thing confuses the rugged smuggler, no matter how hard he puzzles it out.

How Merlin can stand Arthur is a riddle.

Why he hasn't just upped sticks and left is another.

The biggest of them all is who Merlin really is.

And without his beloved Isolde, Tristan's great love is riddles.

Oh… there's a fourth, too.

Where is Merlin, when his friends and his king need him?

**X**

Black lace rustles over leaf litter, and the mercenaries part.

The Lady Morgana, the Last High Priestess, the Traitor Queen, the women who won and lost a kingdom twice, glides smugly down the incline.

Her hair is still a nest of snakes, and Tristan still feels the need to take a sword to that smirk.

The king evidently does too, displaying more of the foolish arrogance Tristan has come to associate with him.

With a word hissed in gleeful malice and a burst of high, cold laughter, she sends him hurtling back, her spells not conveniently failing this time.

The queen shrieks and throws herself to the floor to cradle her winded husband – and really, whose idea was it to bring Gwen, no matter that this is a diplomatic party? Oh yes, the king's.

Tristan can't really blame them; they're still in the cooing and fawning honeymoon phase, after all, when being apart is unbearable.

"Lay down your weapons, noble knights."

Even as a reviled, traitorous witch, she still holds the poise of the highborn, in mocking speech and elegant bearing.

"I only want your king…" She slants her eyebrows and smiles in an expression of innocence so obviously false when her words and tone are poison, blackened by the stains of evil spreading like ink in water from her heart, permeating every word and deed.

"But it's not him you really want, is it?"

**X**

_There_ he is, and not before time, too.

The wind tugs the red scrap of cloth perpetually tied around Merlin's neck, the only sign that time hasn't completely stopped for this little showdown.

Ever since Merlin led him to the Lake of Avalon, Tristan has not so much noticed things about Merlin as sensed them. He was never meant to look upon the place where life and death do not exist as mortals understand them, and so left the clearing with its still, blue waters a different man.

When he is within Merlin's vicinity, he breathes the secrets that clog up the air around him, stuffy and dangerous. He never sees them or reads them as they hang there; just tastes them as they flow over his tongue: some gray and salty, regretful; others, green and bitter: the black secrets are no two the same – one burns his tongue like the spices of the Madhavi people, but another may be oily and runny.

But Tristan doesn't need some kind of supernatural sixth sense to spy the true extent of Merlin's intelligence. He's apprenticed to the most learned man in Camelot, and Tristan has seen the way he deftly manipulates the emotions of his king and his friends to any given situation, forgets nothing - no matter that he may pretend to be a fool - and lies like a spymaster. Even so, there are times when something very Merlin brushes against Tristan's mind as the pretender-manservant stretches his mind, immersing himself in a dusty scroll or contemplating something as he polishes a sword.

But chief among these things that Tristan senses is the fact that Merlin's very presence is mercurial.

Some days, the mask Tristan sees all too clearly – perhaps he's the only one who does – is the only thing visible, and there's nothing but the bumbling servant; that gut feeling, tempered by the magic of Avalon, is barely there. Other days, when some of the invisible weight vanishes from Merlin's shoulders and honesty blinks across his pale face, that feeling is greater, the feeling that Merlin is slightly out of sync with the rest of man, that he's more in tune with the world than other people, more at home in places like Avalon where one can touch the ground and touch something older and greater than thrones and crowns.

Once or twice he's seen Merlin on the battlements, dark brows bent in brooding under dark clouds, and on those sparse occasions he feels as if he could touch the lonely figure in blue and red and brown from down where he stands in the courtyard or on the training field, so gigantic is his otherness; so all-encompassing is the hidden part of him that is alien to men when unfurled, that it's tangible if you know what to look for.

That's what Merlin is like now.

He fills the space with his presence. It suffocates the ground and drowns the hollow. It muffles the wind and strangles the trees.

Surely they can all feel it? They must, judging by their expressions.

Even the idiot king, still lying winded and now wearing an expression of supercilious puzzlement – why would his enemies want someone dead more than him? Such arrogance – must be able to feel that Merlin is something out of this world, must realise that Merlin is the biggest wheel in the maintenance-intensive machine that is destiny.

**X**

_**A/N:**_ Due to the magnificent reaction my previous work _Loyalty, Cowardice, and Love_ received, I have decided that longer sequels are in order – in, as you may have noticed, reverse order.

To any readers of the aforementioned collection of oneshots, I bid you hail and welcome to my cluttered halls. Welcome back, and I'm dreadfully sorry about the plot bunny infestation that is stopping me from writing as much as I would like.

Any new readers, I bid thee welcome as well. Mind where you sit. The armchair by the fire is mine alone.


	2. Hatred II

The witch turns, smirking, and prepares to spew more of her bile over a man she wrongly regards as nothing more than a bug.

"You would give up all of Camelot if you could have Emrys." Merlin states, frankly. He looks the most honest Tristan has ever seen him, even with glacial eyes and tone and set of jaw.

Even with her back turned, Tristan knows Morgana's smirk has been burnt right off her face, and the thought makes him grin.

He can see it from the sudden stiffness in her shoulders, the way the wild coils of her hair whip-tremble at the name.

The fact she whips out a dagger and stalks towards Merlin is another indication she's not happy, as if the other signs weren't enough.

Merlin draws back his teeth, and thunder fills the clearing.

**X**

_Oh_.

Well, that makes sense.

Tristan only has a moment to revel in smug satisfaction as Morgana trips over her skirts to get away from Merlin and everyone else's eyes turn into saucers of various hues before everything vanishes behind –

Fire.

Fire, everywhere.

Except –

There.

As though Merlin can hear his thoughts, a tunnel in the blazing dome of the not-servant's wrath opens up. Sweet blue skies await.

"Come on!" the smuggler shouts over the roar of the flames and the dying thunder of Merlin's great snarl, "He's given us a way out!"

Without waiting to see if the idiot king and his stunned knights are going to get themselves off of the floor, Tristan ties the oddly placid horses into a line and leads them through the gap in the inferno.

**X**

Ragged, black shapes scurry away over the plains. The knights let the fleeing mercenaries go, unable to do anything but gawp with flapping mouths and bulging eyes, like fish.

The flames vanish suddenly.

The Lady Morgana scrabbles for grip on the scorched leaves, and her hands come away with stains to match her soul. Merlin grows taller with every step as he stalks her with hands like claws, making no sound where the witch makes a racket of desperate fear.

Her eyes, two chips of mouldy ice, are melting with fear. As she crawls backwards Tristan hears her mutter under her breath as she shakes her head, a litany of denial issuing from the same tongue that not a minute ago was spitting poison.

Desperation is inspiration, seemingly, and the witch is gone as soon as she appeared, a shadow on a twisting black wind.

Merlin lingers for a moment longer, and then he's gone as well.

Not gone like Morgana has, spiriting away to safety; the towering, all-powerful Merlin vanishes, and he's just a man again. He sags visibly. Even without being able to see his face, Tristan knows that Merlin is tired, far too tired for someone come of age not that long ago.

Merlin turns around, and his throat ripples with a terrified swallow.

_**A/N: **_I would write more, but I didn't want to leave an enormous gap between posts, so it looks like this is a threeshot.

To clarify: this is being written in reverse order. So this is the companion piece to _Love_, and we will finish with the other side of the coin to _Loyalty_.


	3. Hatred III

Arthur starts forward, with fury in his eyes, and Merlin's own eyes shimmer with salty tears Tristan hopes he never has to see shed.

He's already sickened.

His sword rasps like a dying man as he slides it free and puts it between the fool and his knights, and a worthier man than them all.

Arthur flushes red and opens his mouth, expecting everyone to care.

"Shut up." Tristan pre-empts him. Arthur's face screws up in arrogant fury, and he draws his own sword. Gwaine follows his example – and turns to cut the fool down. A swarm of the eager striplings hastily dubbed after both of the interludes Morgana reigned in Camelot swarm him in red cloth and clinking mail. The more seasoned knights take hold of the would-be kingslayer, and he struggles against them. It's good to see that Merlin has one friend who isn't a blind idiot.

Well, not a blind one. Trying to kill a king surrounded by his knights was a bit of a stupid move.

The seven smooth-cheeked, red-cloaked boys move to encircle them both in steel. Tristan laughs. Nothing puts knights off more than someone who might actually be able to beat them.

"I may be twice your age, but I can cut through all of you pups like butter." Tristan jerks his head at Merlin. "And he could do it with a flick of his eyebrows. Stand aside." In the corner of his eye, Merlin flinches. Tristan can hear his power thrumming in the background, a deep, all-pervading note that he didn't notice before because it was always there.

The knights stop in their tracks. A sensible precaution. Merlin's far too nice to actually roast them, but they don't know that. He's an evil sorcerer, after all.

"Now," Tristan continues, "Merlin and I are going to get on our horses and leave. If you want to stop us, then you're welcome to try."

The knights look to their king, who seems on the point of apoplexy, his face an unattractive shade of red and his sword held in a death-grip that surely isn't conducive to keeping his leather gloves in good condition.

"Sire…" Sir Leon says, voice strained from keeping a still-struggling Gwaine in check.

Arthur says nothing. Tristan assumes his most mocking smile and puts himself fully between the king and Merlin, shielding the poor boy from what is probably supposed to be a withering gaze but simply seems petulant.

"Get on a horse, and don't look back." Tristan whispers. Merlin says nothing, but he knows that Merlin knows that he has no other choice.

In one swift movement he slices through the ropes joining the horses together. Merlin hauls himself laboriously up onto the closest one, dejection written in the slump of his shoulders. Tristan slaps another on the rump with the flat of his sword.

The combination of fear, held back by something – Merlin, probably – and the touch of cold steel sends the beast careening toward the knights and the king and queen, with the rest of them – except for Tristan's – right behind.

The fools scatter, and then the two of them are gone, galloping over the high fields with the wind behind them.

Merlin doesn't look back. Good. There's hope for him yet.

Tristan does.

He sees Arthur on his knees, and even though he's fading into the distance, he can tell the prat's face has collapsed and any minute now the tears will fall.

Only Merlin won't be around to wipe them away.

**X**

Merlin is catatonic for the first few days.

Tristan knows what it's like to mourn; only Merlin is mourning the end of a friendship, although he's had his share of dead friends too.

He's closed up his power, wrapping it around his core rather than letting it free; only on a particularly wet night when flint and tinder are not sufficient for a fire does he raise his head and set their mournful pile of twigs ablaze with a sad flick of his eyes.

They sell the horses after the first week. A good bath and a hot meal in a good tavern later, and some of Merlin's reticence vanishes. Little bits of his essence curls around the common room, little golden strands that incite everyone else to greater merriment. The drink flows freely, and Merlin even smiles a little at a particularly raucous song about a bear and a nubile young woman.

They dodge patrols sleep in ditches. They eat roots and small mammals. Tristan could do with a shave, and though it shouldn't be possible, Merlin gets thinner.

At the end of the third week, they're skipping stones on the pebbled shores of the Great Seas of Meredor.

Like a pair of wings, Merlin is spread out completely, from horizon to horizon, as vast as the sea he stares out at.

Tristan wonders what he sees. Can he see to the far shores, where other lands touch these same waters?

"He'll get over it."

Merlin jerks his head to look at Tristan, even more unfathomable than usual.

He doesn't say anything, but maybe he nods a little.

**X**

_**A/N: **_And thus ends _Hatred._ Abrupt ending is abrupt. But I have plans to revisit this and write about Merlin and Tristan's adventures on the road.

At least, after I finish this series, then my other fic, and then do that other fic inspired by ASOIAF.

I hate plot bunnies.


End file.
